Boskop Skull

Boskop skull, human fossil remnant consisting of a portion of a skull dome unearthed in 1913 by labourers on a farm near the village of Boskop in the Transvaal, South Africa. The specimen consisted of the greater part of the frontal and parietal bones and a small portion of the occipital. Excavations at the site a year later disclosed a nearly complete temporal bone, most of the body of the left side of a poorly preserved mandible (with a second molar), and a number of fragments of limb bones. No animal or cultural remains were found in direct association except for a single unusual stone artifact. No geological age can be assigned to the skull.

The frontal bone is rounded and narrow with a constriction above the nonprotruding, thin supraorbital ridges. Some degree of parietal bulging is present, and the thickness of the skull varies from 6 to 13 millimetres. Cranial capacity is high (1,800 millilitres), and the skull is narrow (205 mm long by 150 mm wide).

The skull has been called Neanderthaloid, Cromagnoid, Negroid, pre-Bush (i.e., Bushman and Hottentot), and pre-Negro. Many anthropologists have associated the Boskop skull with a hypothetical Boskop race because of discoveries of apparently similar skulls at other sites in Africa. It has been pointed out, however, that the Boskop skull is of Bushman–Hottentot nature. Further, accurate data concerning its discovery are not available (investigators were not even able to ascertain its exact position when found), which minimizes its significance. It presents no primitive features, and there is no justification for utilizing the term Boskop race.